NEWRead Jean Constant informal film, stream, and TV reviews on LetterboxdThis week update: The Good the Bad and the Ugly (1966), The Magnificent Seven (2016), Thelma (2024) * Wikipedia defines letterboxing as the practice of transferring film shot in a widescreen aspect ratio to standard-width video formats while preserving the original aspect ratio. Generally this is accomplished by adding mattes (or ‘black bars’) above and below the picture area. Letterboxd - the site is a global social network for grass-roots film discussion and discovery. |
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The secrets behind the most recognizable sound effect in Star Wars history have been unveiled. Since the first Star Wars movie in release order in 1977, sound effects have become revolutionized. Ben Burrtt, the sound designer of many a Hollywood film, unveiled the secrets behind the Wilhelm Scream. The Wilhelm Scream is difficult to explain, but instantly recognizable to the ear, even to those not versed in the world of cinematic sound design. "It was a scream I first heard as a child. I recorded it off the television. It was in many of the Warner Bros. films in the 1950s and ’60s. It was a stock scream in their library... Anyway, when I got to USC, there was another student there named Richard Anderson... I told him about the scream... We just joked about it. We included a Wilhelm in a film we did for school and all laughed about it. The naming came out of our discussion...Later, when... we were mixing at Warner Bros. on the first Star Wars movie, I went to their sound library and spoke to the librarian. They didn’t know what a Wilhelm was, because it wasn’t called that, of course, but I was able to find it. So in Star Wars , I stuck it in for a stormtrooper falling into a trench when he gets shot. It was just for my own pleasure. Nobody asked for it. Nobody noticed it. That was it."..